2022 Marketing:  Low Staff & Lower Budgets – How Marketing Teams Tackle a New World of Effective Campaigns

There’s no question that the COVID-19 pandemic changed the marketing game. CMOs experienced major shifts in their marketing teams, from remote working to reduced staff. They also experienced a drop in marketing budgets as their businesses grappled with revenue loss due to reduced consumer traffic.

Now, as a vaccine is being rolled out to the masses and many are returning to normal, companies are breathing a sigh of relief. Will the shifts made in the marketing industry stick? Definitely. Marketing teams now truly understand the importance of creating effective campaigns regardless of resources.

The CMO’s Dilemma: Lower Budgets & Smaller Teams

According to Gartner, pre-COVID-19 marketing budgets remained steady year over year, making up 11% of overall company revenue. Yet, after the pandemic took hold of the marketing industry, more than 44% of CMOs reported midyear budget cuts and nearly 11% of those individuals expected cuts of 15% or more.

Unfortunately, these budget cuts led many businesses to reduce their staff in an effort to save. In March 2020, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 4.4% increase in unemployment in industries including professional and business services. Although those numbers continue to improve, it hasn’t stopped marketing teams from feeling the lasting effects.

If you’re a CMO, VP or Director, you may still be facing a dilemma. How do you continue to lead your team in creating effective campaigns with less cash and fewer hands-on-deck? Several trends have emerged that may give you insight into how to move forward.

How Today’s Marketing Teams Are Creating Effective Campaigns

1. Leaning On Customer Data to Curate Experiences

User-generated content has been a tactic used by marketing teams for a while now. But, marketers are now leaning on their customers even more to further curate highly personalized experiences. This means moving beyond using the customer’s name in an email and into actually delivering what they desire.

Start by diving deeper into the resources you already have such as customer behavior and usage data. Then, use that data to create content, ads, and more that cut the fluff and deliver on the customer’s needs. It’s all about working smarter, not harder.

Jim Kruger, Chief Marketing Officer of Veeam, said it best, 

“This means evolving even beyond the age of personalization and entering an age of personal commerce, where consumers co-curate their experiences with brands to reflect their preferences at any given moment.”

2. Finding Creative Ways to Optimize the Funnel & Content Development

Shortening the marketing funnel not only saves your team time and effort but can also improve the customer experience. Many teams are finding creative ways to make it happen.

For example, marketers are using in-app shopping on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to not only attract customers but give them a simple way to purchase. Not only does this help marketers reduce the time it takes to create shopping experiences, but it also reduces purchasing friction for the customer by removing extra steps.

Other teams are focusing on finding better ways to create and share the content required for each step of the funnel. For example, teams are leaning more on quick live videos instead of text content such as blog posts. 

They’re also focusing on repurposing content across channels instead of starting from scratch. For example, turning one video into multiple social posts, a blog post and an email blast.

3. Harnessing the Power of Marketing Automation

Less marketing staff means more misplaced tasks. Yet, for businesses that have yet to take advantage of automation, this is an opportunity for growth. According to Salesforce, 38% of marketers say they plan to increase their use of marketing automation this year.

Teams are automating everything from campaign planning to content creation, depending on their needs. From using AI to provide personalized experiences to using automated social listening tools to predict audience behavior, teams are not only creating campaigns faster, but they’re improving campaign effectiveness.

Marketing in the Present Must Be Efficient & Effective to Move the Needle

The bottom line is this: You must uncover how you can do more with less. For marketing campaigns to remain effective, the creation, planning, and execution of those campaigns must be efficient and simple.

To make it happen, your team requires a simplified and automated way to visualize campaigns and collaborate. CrossCap’s Marketing Calendar can help.

The Marketing Calendar allows you to visualize your campaigns and marketing plan with calendars and journey maps. It also delivers easy-to-digest metrics, so your team can understand campaign performance. Plus, it’s adaptable to your workflow and existing marketing ecosystem.

The Marketing Calendar allows you to harness the power of automation and create effective campaigns that improve your bottom line, regardless of resources.

Learn More About CrossCap’s Marketing Calendar

Fight back against low budgets and smaller teams with CrossCap to create effective and efficient campaigns. Learn more about our Marketing Calendar today.